Coating installations, for example for glass, often comprise a cathode and an anode, between which a voltage generating a plasma obtains. With the aid of this plasma certain substances are deposited on the glass, be that by sputtering or another method. During sputtering, the cathode is strongly heated since positively charged particles impinge out of the plasma onto a target connected with the cathode and knock atoms or molecules out of it, which subsequently become deposited on the glass.
To keep the heating of the cathode within limits, it is cooled and specifically, as a rule, with a fluid medium, for example water. For this purpose special water supply lines are required. Apart from these water supply lines, power supply lines are also required in order to be able to apply a specific voltage between cathode and anode. Moreover, gas supply lines are required in order to provide gases for generating the plasma or for a chemical reaction.
In conventional coating installations the different energy and media connections are tailored to the particular coatings to be produced. Consequently, cooling pipe supply lines and voltage supply lines are provided, which are laid out for the particular cathode utilized.
Similarly, special gas supply lines for reactive or non-reactive sputtering are disposed on the particular coating installation.
As a rule, a coating installation is comprised of several coating chambers, which are disposed adjacent to one another. If a sputter cathode is to be moved from one coating chamber into another coating chamber, the special supply lines must again be disposed on the new coating chamber by welding, etc. This adaptation of a coating chamber to a new cathode entails very high expenditures.
The invention therefore addresses the problem of providing an energy and media connection for coating installations, which does not require individual adaptation to the particular coating chamber.
This problem is solved according to the present invention.
The advantage attained with the invention comprises in particular that the time expenditure for the reconfiguration of coating installations is considerably reduced. In addition, mobile energy and media connection modules can be moved from one coating chamber to another coating chamber by a single person in a short time and without major auxiliary resources. The maintenance of a coating chamber is also simplified, since the connection modules can be displaced away from this coating chamber.
An embodiment example of the invention is shown in the drawing and will be explained in the following in further detail.